


We Run, Wild and Free

by haraya



Series: Just a Moment in the Light [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen, Mama Shepard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 22:43:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7126126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haraya/pseuds/haraya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grunt teaches Shepard a little something about running away, by teaching her how to run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Run, Wild and Free

**Author's Note:**

> Makes a very tiny reference to [The Commiseration Operation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7029724), but can stand on its own.

Grunt is still flush with victory, the high of vanquishing a thresher maw thrumming in his system as the krogan shaman rambles on about _induction to krogan society_ and _duties to the clan._ He's not actually listening, but it's okay. Shepard can explain it later.  
  
And speaking of. Shepard trails along behind him as they make their way back to the truck. She's not injured, as far as he can tell, but the turian is looking at her askance, brow plates furrowed over his eyes, and she's doing that feet-dragging thing that she does when she's not in a firefight. Shepard is glorious in battle - guns blazing, raining fire on her enemies, her voice ringing clear across the field. But recently, it's like she's turned off when she's not on a mission, and that's not _right._  
  
"Traditionally," the shaman continues prattling on, "A krogan that defeats a thresher maw makes his way back to the camp on foot, to cement the imagery of his triumphant return from the desert--"  
  
"Oh no," Shepard is saying, snapping back to the alertness her battle-rush, "I am _not_ running all forty kilometers back to camp--"  
  
"As the supplicant, technically only Grunt must make his way back on foot, but as his krantt--"  
  
"No," Garrus says resolutely, and climbs into the truck.  
  
"Don't much care about the turian," Grunt rumbles. "But Shepard--"  
  
_"No,"_ she says, shaking her head and backing away from the shaman's stare. "I'm _not_ running back to camp--!"  
  
_"I'll_ run," Grunt growls, a little impatient. _"You_ hold on," he says, and then he grabs Shepard and throws her over his shoulder and starts running, ignoring the turian's snickering from the truck as he gets a headstart. Behind them he can hear the engine roar to life, and he increases his speed as the truck starts to rumble behind them.  
  
_"Ow!"_ Grunt says when Shepard flails her arms and hits him on the head with her elbow. "Stop _squirming,_ Shepard."  
  
"Grunt, put me _down,"_ she says, ignoring him and _still_ squirming. "That's an order!"  
  
And krogans can say what they want about humans, but when Shepard gives an order Grunt's going to follow it, and any krogan who laughs is going to get a chestful of speeding tank-bred at the very _least._  
  
He sets her down. The truck pulls up next to them and the shaman peeks out disapprovingly. "Change of plans, Commander?" he asks.  
  
Shepard frowns down at the dust on her boots, then her eyes shoot up to Grunt's face, looking at him from under the scrunch of her brows. She looks at him for a long moment, then sighs. "No. Go on ahead."  
  
The shaman nods, pleased, but Garrus looks out, concern shifting his face plates into a frown. "Do you need me to--"  
  
"Nah," she cuts him off. "We'll be fine. But the whole camp better be feeling damn _triumphant_ when we get there."  
  
"Shepard--"  
  
"I'll be _fine,_ Garrus," she snaps. _"Go."_  
  
To his credit, the turian follows Shepard's orders without question too. He nods and tosses her his spare clips.  
  
"Try to make it back before the krogans turn me into taxidermy," he says, before disappearing back into the truck, and Grunt and Shepard start to amble down the road as the truck disappears in a whirl of sand and heat. Aralakh beats down on them as they walk, its blazing heat tempered only by the Shroud. He glances over at Shepard, walking sedately beside him, that far-away look back in her eyes as they make the long trek back to camp.  
  
"Heat doesn't bother you?" he grinds out, unsure whether to shorten his strides to match Shepard's or quicken his pace so they can get out of the sun faster.  
  
_"Cold_ bothers me," Shepard says, succinct. "Heat is a goddamn _pal."_  
  
There's weight behind her words - a story she won't tell with sounds but screams with her body instead: her fists clenching, her back arching the slightest bit, her lips pressing into one flat, airtight line. Grunt doesn't ask; there are stories he needs to learn, like the ones imprinted in the tank, and the bits of galactic rules and trivia he gleans from the extranet, but this isn't one of them - the raw edges of Shepard's pain still untempered by time and thrown into glaring relief in the light of the Tuchanka sun.  
  
They walk on - the silence stretching out as if to cover the dusty miles ahead of them. Shepard's holstered her pistol and strapped her rifle to her back, but Grunt keeps his gun in his hands; it wouldn't do for them to be done in _after_ doing the Rite.  
  
Nothing accosts them on the way. Grunt takes a little pride at that, that maybe even the deadly Tuchankan ecosystem knows to get out of their way. And he's happy, and everything would be fine, except that Shepard's silent but for the scuff of her boots on the hot, dead soil, her gaze fixed on a distant point on the horizon.  
  
And that's _it,_ isn't it?  
  
"It's that human, isn't it?" he growls with all the finesse of someone who's only ever known of problems that could be solved with headbutts and a gun. "The one we saw. On Horizon."  
  
Shepard freezes in a weird way; she keeps on walking but she's still, somehow, as if she's not breathing, as if she's trying to make herself disappear in broad Tuchanka daylight. She could, if she wanted to, and Grunt wouldn't be able to do anything about it because he hasn't quite learned to deal with cloaked enemies yet. But she doesn't, merely turns her head slowly to face him, her eyes looking at his face but not quite seeing it.  
  
"Oh, right," she says quietly, in a tone that seems not quite meant for him. "You were there too, weren't you?"  
  
"Are you upset that he got away?"  
  
She flinches at that, her breath catching sharp in her throat as she turns her face from him abruptly, her mouth a stubborn line across her face, and says nothing.  
  
"We could still track him," he continues. "Take him down. I'll let you take the shot, like you did with me and the thresher maw--"  
  
_"No,"_ Shepard says, a strangled word in her too-tight throat. "No, that's not-- I'm not--" She makes a noise that would have been a growl if she'd been a krogan, but since she doesn't have all the necessary vocal chords for it it comes out in a frustrated rumble of sound. "I don't want to kill him, Grunt."  
  
_"Well,"_ he says impatiently. "There's your problem, then."  
  
"It's _not--"_ She sighs. "It's complicated, Grunt." And sometimes things don't translate well across species, but mothers are mothers no matter how many fingers they have, and Shepard's tone clearly says it like she's explaining to a child. She runs a gloved hand over her damp hair, Aralakh's fierce blaze leeching the water from her body, and Grunt imagines it rising to the clouds and falling back to the dead earth as Shepard-sweat rain.  
  
"But I thought we'd _fixed_ this," he retorts, a half-whine, half growl. "I don't get your human grieving rituals, but I thought we were done with 'em. We took you drinking on the Citadel and _everything--"_  
  
"It's not--" Shepard's breathing hard now, even though they haven't changed their pace, even though they're still going slow compared to the speed she usually sets on missions. "It isn't something a few drinks can make go away."  
  
"He was being _stupid,_ Shepard," he asserts. He thinks back to that battle - a strange one, he remembers, wherein their opponent came out willingly into the open, and they'd fought with _words_ even though half of them still had a finger on a trigger. "He let his guard down, exposed his weak spots. He is not an enemy worthy of you."  
  
She barks a laugh, dry and biting as the desert wind. "Sometimes, Grunt, it's not your enemies that hurt you most." Shepard's eyes are shining; he thinks she would be crying if the wind wasn't snatching her tears away before they'd already fallen.  
  
"An ally who hurts you is a traitor," Grunt says, conviction strengthened by images of ancient battles flashing through his mind. "And a traitor is the worst kind of enemy."  
  
Shepard only smiles, the left side of her mouth quirking up in a rueful tilt.  
  
"That's true, isn't it?" she says, and doesn't elaborate.   
  
Grunt growls, frustrated. "He betrayed you when he _ran,"_ he insists.  
  
"That's funny," she says, but she doesn't laugh, and neither does he because it doesn't sound funny to him, either. "Because it feels like _I'm_ the one running away."  
  
_"Shepard,"_ he says, planting himself in the middle of the road and tugging her to a halt. He lowers his head to look her in the eye. "What do you want?"  
  
Her hair is whipping around her face, stark, errant lines across her skin as the desert wind throws it into a frenzy of color and sand. A single drop of sweat runs down the side of her face like a lost, wayward tear.  
  
"I _want--"_ she says, the word stretching and straining with the weight of its meaning. She pauses, unsure, before she says: "I want him to-- _to listen,_ to-- _to understand,_ or, no, I _want--"_ She huffs a frustrated sigh, staring up at the orange sky. "I want him to be happy."  
  
_"Shepard,"_ he says again. "What do _you_ want?"  
  
The wind picks up, blowing sand across the road, and between them, and into the crevices of their armor. Aralakh gazes down on them from high in the sky, and the wind feels like it's trying to wear them down like the ancient ruins tumbling into oblivion, but the two of them stand tall and still, their shadows dark smudges on the ever-changing dunes. Finally, she says, quietly: "I want to be okay."  
  
Grunt levels his face to her and says: "So stop running away."  
  
"I don't know how."  
  
"It's easy. It's exactly like you're doing now, except you go in the opposite direction. One foot in front of the other. Come _on,_ Shepard, I'm _tank-bred_ and even _I_ know this."  
  
She smiles a rueful smile again, but it's not as laced with sadness as it was before. "If this was all some ploy to get me running back to camp..." she says, mock-threatening.  
  
Grunt snorts. "Mind games are for salarians. Krogans just _do."_ She laughs at that, the quiet sound carried away on the desert wind. "Come on," he says, holstering his gun. "I'll run, you hold on."  
  
She laughs again, loud, her mirth echoing across the barren wasteland. The part of Grunt's mind that's read stories thinks it's the kind of laugh that could make even Tuchanka burst into life. He imagines green sprouting from the ground where Shepard's laugh touches.  
  
And this time Shepard gamely climbs onto his back, wrapping her limbs tightly around him as he charges down the path to camp. Water drips onto his skin; _her sweat,_ he thinks, but it falls in drops too fast and too close together for him to be sure. He thinks Shepard might be sniffling, but then again it might just be the sand getting into her nose as they run homeward down the dusty road.

  
\---

  
A rattle of gunfire, a blast, and then they're running back through the derelict Reaper the way they came, hauling a geth along with them.  
  
Shepard stumbles - a husk back in the core chamber had gotten a good hit on her side, and she scrambles to get back up as the horde of husks descend on her. Grunt fumbles with his gun in one hand and the limp geth in the other, but his shot goes wild.  
  
Fortunately, Vakarian's doesn't. He takes out the nearest wave with a burst of rapid shots before he lopes back to Shepard and hauls her bodily behind him.  
  
"Look, Shepard, you know I'd be the first to follow you into hell, but I'd _really_ appreciate it if you didn't claim that ticket quite so soon," he says, trying to run and pull her along and shoot a few husks all at once. It's not quite working.  
  
"Sorry, buddy," she says, wincing. They've stopped, even though the husks are _right there._ Her hand comes away from her side a sticky red, but she reaches for her pistol anyway, gritting her teeth. "But running doesn't seem like a good idea for me right now."  
  
_"I'll_ run," Grunt growls at her, holstering his gun and shoving the geth into Vakarian's arms, staggering him with the weight. _"You_ hold on." Then he yanks Shepard's arms around his neck and hoists her onto his back, ignoring her hiss of pain. She's _Shepard;_ she'll live. And then he's charging down the path toward the exit, Vakarian on his heels as the turian tries to juggle his armful of sniper rifle and geth.  
  
They make it back to the Normandy by the skin of their teeth, and after Shepard visits the med-bay she finds him in the cargo hold and makes him sit through an old Alliance training vid on handling wounded persons in the field. He thinks maybe it's because Dr. Chakwas scolded Shepard's ear off when she went to get her injuries checked, and now she's taking it out on him. _Unfair._  
  
"What?" he asks her when the vid ends. "I got you out, didn't I?"  
  
Shepard looks at him, frowning severely, every inch his battlemaster. Then she sighs and puts her hand atop his head, brushing her thumb across the fractal plates there, and smiles.  
  
"Yeah, you did. Thanks, Grunt."  
  
He gives her a toothy krogan grin. "Anytime, Shepard."  
  
"Yeah, let's maybe _not_ make a habit of getting into those kinds of situations in the first place, alright?"  
  
He snorts. "That's no fun."  
  
She laughs, but he doesn't miss the slight breathless wince as she presses down on her injured side. "Never change, Grunt."

  
\---

  
Grunt _hates_ caves.  
  
They're dark and cramped, generally, and _this_ one has slime on the walls and this weird webbing across every opening. _Every. Single. One._  
  
The rachni are a _treat,_ though.  
  
He laughs as he and Aralakh company fight through them, and then Shepard's here, and that makes it even _better._ Fights are always better when Shepard's around. He thinks maybe all the best enemies follow her around, and maybe _he_ should, too, so he doesn't get left out.  
  
Except he's got _clan duties_ now, as Shepard had helpfully explained when she dropped him off at Tuchanka before she turned herself in. And sure, proving to his bunch of pyjaks that a tank-bred could lead the best scouting party in krogan history was fun, but it wasn't _Shepard-_ fun.  
  
But it is _now,_ and they storm through the caverns raining gunfire at anything that moves, laughing uproariously at the ease with which they mow down the rachni. Except it gets harder after a while, and harder still after that, and Shepard's not answering her comm. So he calls her, frustration in his voice as he and his men start to lose ground, bit by bit.  
  
And his men can say what they want about taking orders from a human, but battlemasters are battlemasters even if he doesn't understand their orders, so he leaves his men with their screams ringing in his ears and runs for Shepard.  
  
They're maybe halfway to the exit when the rachni swarms find them, and there's not much they can do. There's too many, and this isn't a long dusty road on Tuchanka or the cavernous dark of a derelict Reaper, so like any good krogan, Grunt makes the choice to preserve the best of them there.  
  
Her companions leave readily enough, but Shepard _lingers,_ frowning, her fingers tight around her gun. _"Grunt,"_ she says, a warning and a plea.  
  
_"You_ run," he tells her, grinning at the prospect of a good fight. _"I'll_ hold them _off."_  
  
Shepard doesn't say anything, just looks at him in a way that might have meant _I'm proud of you,_ or, alternatively, _You are such an idiot_ , before suddenly all the fight leaves her and her shoulders slump as she turns and sprints out the cave.  
  
He doesn't recall much - a shot, a sting, a fall - but he's conscious enough to realize he's alive and krogan enough to not let himself rot at the bottom of a pit with a bunch of rachni bits, so he claws his way up, and out, and then Shepard drags him into the shuttle, digging into him before they've even taken off.  
  
"Don't you _ever_ do that again, Grunt," she says through clenched teeth, a frantic look in her eyes as she staunches the wound on his back.  
  
He just laughs, closes his eyes against the needle-pains in his tired legs and the cool spread of medi-gel on his back, and feels grateful to be home.

  
\---

  
In the aftermath of the war, the galaxy heals slowly, but it's been _months_ and Shepard doesn't seem to be getting better.  
  
Her mate had been ecstatic as a krogan father when she'd first woken up - all of them had. But weeks passed, and then months, and she didn't seem to go back to the way she was before: proud and commanding, invincible, incorruptible, _Commander fucking Shepard_ bringing the galaxy to heel.  
  
Grunt goes to visit her, and he catches the tail end of a conversation as he stands in the hospital corridor.  
  
"Shepard," her mate says. "Is it the leg? The doctors--"  
  
_"No,_ Kaidan, it's not my _fucking_ leg," she snaps, and Grunt smiles because she can still bite, at least. "It's--" she growls, low and irritated, and when he peeks in the open doorway she's flinging her hand out toward the window in a frustrated gesture. "It's-- all _that."_  
  
"Shepard--"  
  
"No, _don't._ Don't give me the _'It's not your fault'_ speech. It is. It _is,_ Kaidan. The entire galactic fleet is stuck in the Sol system because of me. You need to go out while I just sit here every _fucking_ day to coordinate relief operations because of me. The geth are gone because of me. _EDI's gone_ because of--"  
  
Her mate moves quickly then, wrapping her in an embrace. "And the rest of the galaxy has a future," he says quietly, "Because of _you."_  
  
He kisses her, soft and tender, but Shepard's hands remain balled in unhappy fists on her sheets. "Don't forget that." He rises, then kisses her gently atop her head. "I'll be back by sundown."  
  
"Fix a galaxy or two for me," she jokes, but no one laughs because it's not really funny.  
  
Her mate sees Grunt when he exits her room, but he just sighs and makes no move to stop an eight-hundred-pound krogan from seeing his battlemaster, no matter how bad her state is. Smart man. "Just no stupid stunts, alright?" Kaidan says, and then he leaves.  
  
"Shepard," he says when he enters.  
  
"Grunt," she says, surprise chasing away the sadness lining her face the tiniest bit. "What are you doing here?"  
  
"Busting you out," he tells her. "Come on." But Shepard makes no move to get up from the hospital bed, merely turns to face the window.  
  
"I can't, remember?" she says.  
  
"You taking orders from that human now, Shepard?" he taunts, ignoring the furrow of her brow as she readies a retort. "Come _on,"_ he says. "You want to _see,_ don't you?"  
  
She frowns, opens her mouth to say something, but then she stops to look at him, before she smiles the littlest bit and says: "You are _not_ going to lower me from the hospital window by a rope, Grunt."  
  
"Don't have to," he says. "'Cause _you_ don't weigh eight hundred pounds. Now come _on,_ Shepard."  
  
She sighs, but her smile means she's game, and he carries her down and out into the city, and then even further out, where the rubble is only just beginning to be cleared and they're scattered everywhere on the side of the long, deserted road.  
  
He sets her down and lets her look around, watches her carefully as she slumps beside a geth prime that hadn't been salvaged yet. He watches her flip shut the two little lights on top of its head, long since dimmed, and just sit there for a long while, quiet and pensive.  
  
"Hey, Shepard," he says finally. "Let's run."  
  
She looks up at him from her place on the ground, sadness lying in the corners of her eyes as she smiles ruefully. "I can't. My leg's not working properly, remember?"  
  
_"I'll_ run," he says, the words coming easily. "You--"  
  
"Hold on," she finishes, her smile softening. "Alright," she says. "Alright."  
  
So he kneels down in front of her, and she wraps her limbs tightly around him, and when he lifts her up he thinks that he'd have expected her to be heavier now, because the savior of the galaxy shouldn't feel this light, this _small_ \- not when she can crush the Reapers under her boot, not when she saved all of them with a pull of the trigger and the weight of souls numbering in the millions pressing down on her shoulders.   
  
But. She's Shepard, still, and she holds on, and he runs as fast as he can down the cracked asphalt road, past the debris, past the destruction, running toward the horizon where hopefully there is less debris and less destruction, where death doesn't nip at their heels quite so much. He doesn't know how long he runs; he doesn't notice the landscape changing from concrete and rubble to scorched earth and mud. All he knows is the impact when his boots meet the earth, shocking its way up his legs, the wind streaming past their faces, Shepard's quiet, even breathing beside his ear as she takes in everything with her eyes wide open.  
  
It's a long while later before he slows, and another long while before he stops and sets Shepard down, using all of one arm to keep her standing, barefoot as she is, on the rough tar-black road. Ash clings to her feet but she doesn't mind; she takes a tentative step and Grunt follows, because he always does.  
  
A few more steps. Grunt thinks it isn't _fair;_ steps like Shepard's ought to make the world bloom where she walks, make the earth burst into life to cushion her feet as she moves tentatively through her broken, redeemed planet. But it doesn't; it stays concrete and ash and thankless rubble, and Shepard stays as she is - a little bent, a little broken, a whole lot _done_ \- the dust of the battle making dark streaks against her skin.  
  
She scans the horizon for movement, sharp eyes looking for something that can't or doesn't want to be found. "Where do synthetic souls go, Grunt?" she asks, eyes far away, her good left hand gripping his arm tightly.  
  
He shrugs with the shoulder she isn't leaning on. "Dunno," he says. "We could keep running. Find out."  
  
Shepard's quiet for a few moments - an eternity for EDI or Legion, he remembers - before she says, quietly: "I think... I think we should turn around. Run back in that direction. Sound good?"  
  
"On your orders, battlemaster," he says, then waits for her to climb onto his back by herself. He doesn't pull her up, only lowers himself to help her reach easier, because sons are sons no matter how many redundant systems they have and he knows when she needs to do something by herself.  
  
She stills when she's settled on his back, breathing a little hard with the effort, and then she says, "I'm holding on, Grunt."  
  
He shifts his hold, securing her, and then he says, "I know, Shepard," before he takes off, running back the way they came.

**Author's Note:**

> Because I am, apparently, a sucker for "Squadmates taking care of Shep" fics. And also Mama Shep and Baby Grunt are cute af


End file.
